Patti Smith Want Quotations

The thing I've always liked about performing is that I decide what I want to wear, whether I want to comb my hair.

One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal.

I want to be around a really long time. I want to be a thorn in the side of everything as long as possible.

I'm a worker. I do the work to communicate, and I want people to embrace it, and when they do I'm happy.

Even as a child, I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want to wear red lipstick.

I'm more concerned with the work people do than their gender. When I was younger, I was pretty judgmental. Things had to be a certain way. Now I just want to see the work. It doesn't matter who does it.

I want to keep my life as unfettered as possible. So maybe I'll just pretend to get rare books from my catalogue, and not really get them.

We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.

You don't want to OD on improvisation.

Ultimately, I want to make everyone horny.

If your label won't let you have the cover you want or sing the songs you want, then leave!

I wanted to see who this Yeats person was, and I said to my mother, 'I want a book by this person.' And she bought it for me, and a lot of it was over my head, but I had it.

It got to the point where I started hiding because I didn't want to be photographed. (On living with Robert Mapplethorpe)

I'm here right now and I want now to be the greatest time.

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is to know what you want and pursue it.